Nisigi Violence

The discovery that would change Dumušiddu's life was the product of pure serendipity. He had been up late at night, marking the latest paper by his new Advanced Student, Lihzatu. Her work was, as ever, probing and poignant. She clearly had real insight into the nature of the warp and its possible manipulation to generate ritual power. She'd even invented an accompanying device for more accurately measuring the degree of ritual power generated at a site. It was perched beside Dumušiddu, on his desk as he marked the paper, mocking him with its mechanical intricacy. Dumušiddu hated her.

At the rate Lihzatu's work was improving she would soon surpass Dumušiddu, a thought that horrified and offended him. She was young, female, Erēnii—any one alone would make it humiliating for her to outpace him. Being so thoroughly shown up by her was unthinkable.

Finally, however, Dumušiddu's moment came. Lihzatu made an ambiguously worded claim—a charitable reading made clear what she meant and it was perfectly cogent. But there was another reading available, one according to which she had made quite a basic error and could be appropriately chastised. Seizing his opportunity, Dumušiddu resolved to cover her essay in red ink excoriating Lihzatu for the error—and, just as he put pen to paper, Lihzatu's device gave a little "ping."

At first Dumušiddu thought it another error and delighted in adding remarks to his invective about her useless trinkets—but gradually he noticed a pattern. Whenever he ignored Lihzatu's plain meaning, deliberately refused to interpret her fairly, or dismissed her ideas without due attention, Lihzatu's device would register it as pleasing to Khorne. An act of violence, however minuscule and abstract, that generated ritual power. Taking a word for "knowledge" from the old tongue, Dumušiddu named such acts "Nisigi Violence" and published his own paper taking full credit for the discovery—an act which, he was pleased to find, generated ritual energy all on its own.

Soon enough Dumušiddu was being invited to give talks on Nisigi Violence, receiving applications to work with him from Advanced Students across the Empire, and finding endless opportunity to divide and subdivide the types of Nisigi Violence that Lihzatu's device would register. For a few years Dumušiddu's star shone bright.

Alas, all evil things must come to an end. Lihzatu eventually published the paper Dumušiddu had been marking all those years ago. She conclusively demonstrated that, responsive as it was to resonances of meaning and narratological force, the warp was highly sensitive to dramatic irony, and ritual power increased with satisfying karmic harmonies in violence. (Her paper was much clearer for having passed through Dumušiddu's rigours.) It didn’t take long for scholars to put two and two together, and soon actively avoiding crediting Dumušiddu for Nisigi Violence became common practice—scholars joked it was their “contribution to the war effort” every time they dismissed Dumušiddu or passed him over for promotion.

Dumušiddu had never been one to appreciate irony. This was not over.